I access the Internet by plugging in a cell phone to my desktop PC. Periodically, my cellco "slows down" my packets to about 10KBytes/sec (when I go over my limited bandwidth)

Even though I can't doanload as quickly, I still expected to be able to use this PC for SETI@home work, since I plug my phone into it from 7PM to 7AM.

I have set up my preference to limit download and upload rates to what I've observed, but workunit downloads keep aborting, as if there was an internal "kill slow downloads" system in place that doesn't check the "limit download speed setting". So I end up with a bunch of aborted tasks, apparently, and SETI@home essentially blacklists me for having a slow connection.

Here's the application details I see as of 7PM today:
SETI@home Enhanced 5.28 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Number of tasks completed 3243
Max tasks per day 1
Number of tasks today 0
Consecutive valid tasks 0
Average processing rate 11.994520458182
Average turnaround time 34.57 days
SETI@home Enhanced 6.03 i686-pc-linux-gnu
Number of tasks completed 490
Max tasks per day 1
Number of tasks today 0
Consecutive valid tasks 0
Average processing rate 7.8352645230377
Average turnaround time 37.20 days

Also, I should point out that I'd normally post this to one of the "number crunchers" boards, but since I have 0.05 recent average credit, I can't even post to the normal SETI message boards (I have 900,000 workunits of credit, just not enough of is recent enough to allow me to post - kinda ridiculous)

The more recent versions of the BOINC client have a setting to limit the amount of data transferred / time period. You get to specify the time period and the amount of data. If you set these correctly, you should be able to prevent yourself from going over the limit.BOINC WIKI

I access the Internet by plugging in a cell phone to my desktop PC. Periodically, my cellco "slows down" my packets to about 10KBytes/sec (when I go over my limited bandwidth)

Even though I can't doanload as quickly, I still expected to be able to use this PC for SETI@home work, since I plug my phone into it from 7PM to 7AM.

I have set up my preference to limit download and upload rates to what I've observed, but workunit downloads keep aborting, as if there was an internal "kill slow downloads" system in place that doesn't check the "limit download speed setting". So I end up with a bunch of aborted tasks, apparently, and SETI@home essentially blacklists me for having a slow connection.

I'm not a linux user, and haven't ever tried data transfer of this magnitude with a cellphone connection, but the error message "can't resolve hostname" generally occurs when your internet connection is lost. IIRC, the connection can't resolve with a DNS server, hence the error. I also see it occasionally if my router chokes up, and a reset of the router corrects it. So, I'd speculate based on the above log that, at the time, your cell wasn't connecting to the internet.

And the downloads aren't "aborting", they're just being delayed and retried. OTOH, if you're manually aborting them, Seti will take note of that and severely restrict the amount of work it will try to send to you. A "dialup" connection might be slower than many here use, but there is no "penalty" per se for slower download speeds.

Downloads appear to be running to completion now, but I'm still experiencing sporadic "download error" messages with actual work units, and they never show up in the "tasks" page. I was able to download the smaller files that apparently come with a new setiathome executable.

On a hunch, I also check "disable image file verification", on a chance that my ISP (T-mobile) is modifying image files. I hope this isn't the case, since I expect my ISP to transmit the data as it is, no matter whether it thinks it can optimize the data...

On a hunch, I also check "disable image file verification", on a chance that my ISP (T-mobile) is modifying image files. I hope this isn't the case, since I expect my ISP to transmit the data as it is, no matter whether it thinks it can optimize the data...

If there is a "turbo speed" or similar setting available at your ISP, it enables the recompression of jpg files.BOINC WIKI

Very strange. I'm seeing checksum errors, multiple times, for downloads.
There is no "turbo mode" switch on my phone.but if they are trying to recompressing "image files", then I'm suspicious about that.

Very strange. I'm seeing checksum errors, multiple times, for downloads.
There is no "turbo mode" switch on my phone.but if they are trying to recompressing "image files", then I'm suspicious about that.

Are SETI@home workunits actually transmitted as .JPEG files? I'm really confused, I would think they would be sent as another MIME type, something more like "binary data", since they would have a different kind of file format?

I've seen notes on various cell phone discussion about disabling caching and proxy server settings to enable that, but nothing is being discussed on the message boards about which ISP/carriers are trying to compress workunits and causing failures.

I can run the boinc command line, but need a better idea about what commands to run to test things one command at a time....

No, not the work units but some images after initially adding the project or after a reset.

I can't tell you why your work units aren't downloaded correctly, but perhaps you should disable receiving of AstroPulse WUs on your SETI@home preferences page, because they have 8 MiB in contrast to the 300 KiB of the MultiBeam units.

As for debugging, you could try some logging options in cc_config.xml (namely those containing 'http' and 'xfer' in the name.

No, not the work units but some images after initially adding the project or after a reset.

I can't tell you why your work units aren't downloaded correctly, but perhaps you should disable receiving of AstroPulse WUs on your SETI@home preferences page, because they have 8 MiB in contrast to the 300 KiB of the MultiBeam units.

As for debugging, you could try some logging options in cc_config.xml (namely those containing 'http' and 'xfer' in the name.

Gruß,
Gundolf

There are several pieces, some of which are required to be exact for computation to happen correctly, but the images for the screen saver are not in that list. The png files are just for pretty pictures on the screen saver.BOINC WIKI

I seem to be getting consistent HTTP Errors, but it seems unlikely that I'd be getting this many actually network errors, unless something is seriously wrong..

Web browsing works without a hitch, so I'm not sure what the problem could be.
Is there a manually downloadable workunit I can try running, even if I don't get credit for it? I want to isolate where the error is actually occurring.

There are several pieces, some of which are required to be exact for computation to happen correctly, but the images for the screen saver are not in that list. The png files are just for pretty pictures on the screen saver.

But will BOINC start any tasks if the .png (or .jpg) files aren't downloaded completely?

I've enabled additional debug logging by changing a few zeros to ones, but don't see any extra output. Is there a log file/directory I should be looking for on Linux, that shows the BOINC manager and BOINC Apps starting up?

I've enabled additional debug logging by changing a few zeros to ones, but don't see any extra output. Is there a log file/directory I should be looking for on Linux, that shows the BOINC manager and BOINC Apps starting up?

The cc_config.xml file with the options must be an ANSI file placed in your BOINC data directory. You'll see the line about log flags updated in the BOINC startup messages.

The file that contains those same messages is also in the BOINC data directory and its name starts with stdoutdae. I'm not sure about the suffix with linux.